The Invader

The Invader

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Sean Young and Daniel Baldwin star in The Invader, a direct-to-video science-fiction story set almost entirely in the state of Washington. Young plays a schoolteacher on the outs with policeman boyfriend Baldwin over her inability to have children. One night at a bar, she's approached by a mysterious stranger (the eternally placid Ben Cross) who impregnates her by way of an especially energetic round of French kissing. As it turns out, Cross is among the last of an alien species, and Marsor wherever he's fromneeds women. Complicating matters, he and Young are pursued by Nick Mancuso, an assassin from an enemy planet devoted to wiping out Cross' kind. The Invader is a silly movie, a sort of cross between pulp science fiction and pulp romance. A good deal of the film is devoted to Young's slow resignation to her fate as the unconsulted progenitor of an alien race; she slowly learns to care for her kidnapper, casting a slightly creepy air over the proceedings. More troubling is The Invader's unrelenting dullness. While the premise itself will be familiar to those who have heard the countless accounts of UFO "abductees," writer/director Mark Rosman has devoted the bulk of the film to a long, unimaginative, tension- and logic-free chase in which Cross and Young drive, then hike, then inexplicably begin driving again to get back to his spaceship. Skip it.